The Being of Man and His Future Evolution

Schmidt Number: S-1895

On-line since: 30th January, 2005

RHYTHM IN THE BODIES OF
MAN

21st December 1908

The fact that we have
the possibility of progressing to more and more advanced studies in
this group is solely due to the arrangements we have made concerning
the courses running parallel with the group lectures. Therefore I
would like to ask you to give these courses all your support. It is
necessary to have somewhere where we can progress with the lectures.
Otherwise we would have to start from the beginning every year.

We
will concern ourselves today with something that will again appear to
be far removed from the previous lectures but which will nevertheless
fit into our present train of thought. We want to take as our
starting-point an observation made in one of the last public
lectures; the one on ‘Superstition from the Spiritual
Scientific Point of View’. An observation was made there that
cannot be carried further in a public lecture because, for a deeper
understanding of it, certain preliminary concepts would have to be
presupposed that are less related to an intellectual understanding
than to an understanding that lies in our whole soul constitution,
and that we can only acquire after years of group work. Patient work
of this kind brings us ultimately to the point where things that
would have seemed absurd appear possible and probable, and we can see
that life bears them out. The observation we want to start from is
that it is an ordinary fact and no superstition that in the case of
certain illnesses like, for instance, pneumonia, there is a crisis on
the seventh day when the patient can easily die, and the doctor has
to do everything in his power to bring the patient through this
crisis which occurs without fail on the seventh day. This is
recognised today by every sensible doctor, though doctors cannot
investigate the causes because they have no idea of the spiritual
foundation of things. First of all I will simply present you with the
fact that pneumonia shows something quite remarkable that is
connected with the mysterious number seven.

We
must look at the human being in a way that makes it possible to
understand this fact and many others besides. You know from the
innumerable times we have referred to it that man can only be
understood when we know that he has a fourfold structure of physical
body, etheric body, astral body and ego. These four members of man's
being are connected with and dependent on one another in the most
manifold ways. Each member influences the other, and therefore they
are in constant connection one with another. But this cooperation is
very complicated. It takes a very long time for man to get to know
these connections as well as the relationship of these members to
certain forces, processes and beings in the cosmos as a whole. For
man has a connection with the cosmos through each of his members; a
connection which is continuous — and this again is very
important — but which is also variable. What we know as the
physical body, etheric body and so on are connected with one another
but also with the cosmos, the whole world about us. For what we have
within us is also to a certain extent outside us, and so we could say
that we can best get to know these inner and outer connections if we
observe man both in a waking and sleeping state.

When
a man lies asleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed and the
astral body and the ego are to a certain extent outside these. But
this is only roughly speaking. A rough idea is sufficient for a
number of things, but we want to understand this situation a little
more accurately today. The astral body and the ego are not active in
the physical body now. But the physical body with its nerves and
blood system and the etheric body cannot exist unless they are
interpenetrated by an astral body and something resembling an ego.
Nor could the etheric body exist without being interpenetrated by
higher entities. When the human being's own astral body and ego
depart, the activities of these two members have to be replaced. The
human body cannot remain without there being an ego and an astral
body active within it, so there also has to be an ego and an astral
body active when the human being is asleep. To be exact, we would
have to say that the ego and the astral body that are active in the
human being's sleeping physical body are also within the human being
during the day, but their activity is completely overpowered by the
activity of the human being's own astral body and ego. If we want to
imagine the ego as it is nowadays, in the waking state, we have to
tell ourselves that this human ego is within the human body when man
is awake, and because of its activity during this time it deprives a
larger ego of its sphere of influence. What does our own limited ego
actually do during sleep? We can in truth say fairly accurately that
this ego that has freed itself in the daytime from the large cosmic
ego and that has a free hand in the human body, descends into the
cosmic ego during the night and foregoes its own activity. And
because the day ego descends into the cosmic ego, the cosmic ego can
work unhindered and get rid of all the exhaustion that has
accumulated during the day. Because the day ego sinks down into the
cosmic ego it is possible for the night ego to be active in an
all-embracing way. If you want to imagine it pictorially, you can
visualise the relationship of the day ego to the night ego as though
the day ego described a circle, passing through the greater part of
this circle outside the realm of the great ego and descending into
the great ego at night. For sixteen hours on average it is outside
the night ego and for eight hours it is within it.

You
will only understand this correctly if you take what I have said
quite literally, namely that your ego never stays the same for the
whole sixteen hours — assuming that to be the normal time for
being awake — and that the ego is changing all this while. It
describes part of a circle and then sinks down, passing through more
changes during the night, about which the ordinary human being knows
nothing. These changes become more and more unconscious until a
climax is reached, and then the ego becomes slowly more conscious
again. We must say, then, that in the course of twenty-four hours the
human being is continuously undergoing certain changes, the outer
symbol of which we can imagine as a circle, as a hand of a clock
describing a circle and disappearing from time to time into the large
cosmic ego.

The
human astral body goes through changes in a very similar way. This
changes too in such a way that we can imagine it symbolically as
describing a circle. With the astral body too the changes are such
that we really have to speak of a kind of sinking down into a cosmic
astral body. Only present-day man does not notice this descent into
the cosmic astral body any more, whilst in earlier times man was very
aware of it. Then man felt his own innate astral feelings that he had
at one particular time alternating as it were with quite different
feelings at another time. At one time he felt more alive in the world
around him and at another time he was more aware of his own inner
feelings. You could perceive quite different shades of feeling in the
astral body because it underwent rhythmic changes in the course of
seven days, that is seven times twenty-four hours, that can again be
compared to a circle. The ego undergoes rhythmic changes over a
period of twenty-four hours, still expressed today in the alternation
between waking and sleeping, and the astral body in seven times
twenty-four hours. In primeval man these rhythmic changes occurred
very vividly. Thus in the astral body rhythmic changes run their
course for seven days, and on the eighth day the rhythm begins again.
The astral body actually does sink down into a universal cosmic
astral body for part of the time that man undergoes this rhythm. For
the remainder of the time it is more outside this cosmic astral body.
This can give you a picture of how significant for man's life the
universal astral body and ego are that are present in man when he is
asleep. This I into which he plunges when he falls asleep and which
keeps his blood flowing at night, is the same ego that works in his
body during sleep. If he sleeps in the daytime he also goes into this
universal ego, and this brings a certain irregularity into his rhythm
which would have worked destructively in earlier times but which is
not so destructive these days because in our times human life has
changed considerably in this respect. During the course of the seven
days, man's astral body actually goes into the same part of the
universal cosmic astral body which interpenetrates the physical and
etheric bodies during sleep. This brings about changes in man's inner
feelings. This is hardly noticed today, though in earlier times it
could not be ignored.

It
is not only the ego and astral body that go through certain
particular rhythmic changes but the etheric body does so too. These
take place in such a way that in four times seven days the human
etheric body, symbolically speaking, revolves on its own axis, and
after four times seven days it comes back to the beginning again. A
quite definite rhythm takes place in the course of the four times
seven days. But now we are approaching a sphere about which we would
have to speak in great detail if you are to understand it all. You
will remember my saying that a man's etheric body is female and a
woman's male. The two have a different rhythm, but we do not want to
go into that today. We just want to emphasise that this rhythm occurs
and, because of the difference in man and woman, we will just say it
is approximately four times seven days.

This,
however, does not bring us to the end of the matter. Quite definite
processes are rhythmically repeated in the physical body too, however
improbable this sounds to people today. Nowadays they have almost
become obliterated, because man has had to become independent of
certain processes, but they are still noticeable to occult
observation. If the physical body were entirely left to itself this
rhythm would take place over a period of ten times seven times four
days in the woman and twelve times seven times four days in the man.
That is how it would be if the human being were entirely left to the
laws inherent in the rhythms. At one time it was really like this,
but man has become more free of the cosmic influences around him.
Thus we have a flow of rhythmic processes in the four members of
man's being. If you like, you can imagine each of the four rhythms as
a circling. The rhythms man would carry out in his physical body, for
instance, if he were left entirely to himself, only approximate, of
course, with the external physical, purely spatial processes that
correspond to these rhythms. This is because man has been driven back
upon himself in the cause of freedom, and his relationship to the
cosmos has changed accordingly.

You
will have noticed from the number ten times seven times four or
twelve times seven times four that the rhythm of the physical body
corresponds roughly to the course of the year. You can imagine an
external symbol for these changes in the physical body if you think
that in the course of a year the human being turns around as it were;
at one time he is on one side of the sun and at another on the other.
If we imagine that he always turns his face to the sun, then in the
course of a year he has to revolve once on his own axis and once
round the sun. Anyone who only looks at it superficially will think
that it is of no consequence, but it happens to be very important.
These rhythms occurring in the four bodies were implanted into man
over long periods of time, and the hierarchies — entities we
have often spoken about — have brought it about that the
various bodies influence one another. We know that we are embedded in
higher beings. It is due to the action of these spiritual beings, who
fill both physical and spiritual space with their deeds, that these
particular connections come about. If you consider what I have just
said, however, you will find a new way of looking at a thought I
often mentioned here last winter. The establishing of the rhythm of
the physical body already began on ancient Saturn. The incorporating
of the etheric body into the physical body, in such a way that the
rhythm of the two bodies harmonise, is the work of other spirits, the
spirits of the Sun. Through the working together of the various
rhythms a relationship is brought about in the same way as the
relationship of the two hands of a clock is determined by their
rhythm. On ancient Moon another rhythm was incorporated, that of the
astral body.

Now
those spirits that regulated our whole cosmos — for everything
of a physical nature is an expression of those beings — had to
create the outer physical movement in accordance with their own inner
relationships. That the sun is encircled by the earth in a year
arises out of the rhythm that was implanted into the physical body
long ages before the physical constellation existed. Thus the spatial
relationships between these heavenly bodies were regulated from out
of the spirit. The moon had to go round the earth because its
rotation had to correspond to the rotation of the human etheric body
in four times seven days because this rhythm was to find its
expression in the movement of the moon. The changing illumination of
the moon by the sun — the moon's four quarters —
correspond to the different rhythms of the astral body, and the
revolution of the earth in the course of a day corresponds to the ego
rhythm. In connection with this ego rhythm in particular we can point
out something that occultism has always taught, but which will appear
to people nowadays as mere fantasy, although it is nevertheless true.
In very ancient times the earth did not revolve around its axis; this
axial rotation arose in the course of time. Whilst earth man was
still in a different condition, this movement did not as yet exist.
The first stimulus to movement did not occur in the earth but in man.
The human ego was given this stimulus to turn by the spirits to whom
it is subject, and the human ego actually took the earth with it and
made it revolve round it. The revolution of the earth is the result
of the ego rhythm. And this is true, however astonishing it sounds.
The spiritual members of man that were developing their ego-hood had
to receive the stimulus to turn first, and then they took the earth
with them. Later on this was different. Man became free on the earth;
conditions changed so that man was freed from the surrounding cosmic
powers. But this is really what it was like originally. Thus you can
see how everything that is physical around us is actually an outcome
of the spiritual. Spirit is always there first. And it is the spirit
that sets everything going.

And
now think of the astral body that accomplishes its round in the
course of seven days. Imagine how illnesses are connected with
certain irregularities of the astral body because these
irregularities are passed on through the etheric body to the physical
body. Now we will suppose that the astral body has a certain defect.
Through this defect it affects the etheric body and the defect is
then passed on to the physical body. This also becomes defective.
Then the organism starts revolting against the defect and applies
protective measures. This revolt is usually in the form of a
temperature, which summons man's forces of recovery. A temperature
is not an illness; it is the human being calling together all the
forces in his organism to put this defect right again. This revolt of
the whole organism against the defect expresses itself as a rule in a
feverish temperature. A temperature is the most beneficial,
restorative part of an illness. The particular area that is defective
cannot heal by itself, and it has to receive the forces from other
places, and this is expressed in the temperature.

Now
imagine this temperature occurring with pneumonia. The lungs have
become defective through one or other cause. When it is the human
lungs in particular that have suffered some damage, the astral body
becomes defective first and then it passes through the etheric body
to the physical body. With pneumonia the cause is always in the
astral body; pneumonia can occur in no other way. Now think of the
astral body's rhythm. The day pneumonia appears the astral body
affects the physical body. Now the body begins to revolt with a
temperature. Seven days later the astral and etheric bodies are in
the same mutual relationship; parts of them meet again. But it is not
the same part of the etheric body, because the etheric body has been
going through its own rhythm. It meets the next part. This is also
affected by the astral body, but this time in the opposite way. The
fever is now suppressed. Through the fact that the particular part of
the astral body that coincided with the previous quarter of the
etheric body seven days earlier coincides with its next quarter, the
opposite process from a week ago is produced, namely a reaction to
the fever. The opposing rhythm of the body now suppresses the
temperature. For the human body is meant to be healthy, and that is
the purpose of the rhythm. Certain influences increase in the first
seven days, and in the next seven days they have to decline. In a
healthy person this increasing and decreasing alternates. When a
person is ill, however, his life is endangered when the fever is
suppressed. Whilst in a healthy person an ascending process is
reversed on the seventh day, in an ill person the ascending process
ought to continue. But a rapid ascent causes a rapid fall. This is
the reason for the pneumonia crisis on the seventh day.

We
can understand this if we consider that the lungs were developed at a
time when the moon had already split off and was preparing to develop
its own rhythm, and the rhythm of the days was also beginning to
develop. This is why even today the lungs are still connected with
the astral body and the rhythm of the etheric body.

You
can see, then, that spiritual science helps us to form a judgment of
just these abnormal conditions in human life, and that the whole
nature of man can be understood only when we see these conditions. It
will only become possible again for the sciences to achieve fruitful
results when man is permeated with the great truths of spiritual
science. In earlier times, up to about the middle of the earth
evolution, all the rhythms in man were much more in harmony with the
rhythms of outer nature. Since that time, that is, since the middle
of Atlantean times, however, things have shifted. Man's inner life
has emancipated itself from outer rhythm, but he has kept his inner
rhythm. It is just because the rhythms do not harmonise that man has
acquired his independence and freedom, otherwise the evolution of
freedom in the history of mankind would not have been possible. Man's
rhythm compared with the sun, or the earth's compared with the sun
has shot ahead. A similar thing has happened with the other rhythms,
for instance that of the astral body. In earlier times man
experienced quite different shades of mood in the course of seven
days. At one time everything outside him made a great impression on
him, and at another time he lived more in his inner life. It is
because the rhythms are no longer in harmony that the condition of
inner experience remains, even when man has more joy from the outer
world, and vice versa. They combine and balance one another and this
makes the astral body even-tempered, as it were. By means of careful
observation you can still notice these alternations of mood in people
who live more in their astral body. The variations in the condition
of the astral body can be established in the case of people who are
psychologically or mentally ill.

The
ego rhythm was the last to arise, but there too, things have already
become displaced. Man can also sleep in the daytime, and stay awake
at night. In earlier times this rhythm always coincided with the
outer one. In Atlantis something very serious would have happened if
man had wished to sleep in the daytime and stay awake at night. He
would have brought his whole life into disorder. The rhythm is still
there today to a certain extent, but it has become independent of
outer circumstances. This is the same thing as setting a reliable
clock exactly in time with the sun. You can then tell the exact solar
time. But you could also turn the clock to midnight when it is seven
o'clock in the evening. Then the rhythm of the clock will still
remain correct but it would be displaced compared with that of the
sun. This is what it is like with man. Man has kept the old rhythm
that he used to share with the whole cosmos, but it has become
displaced. If the clock were a living being it would be justified in
dissociating its rhythm from the surrounding rhythms. In the far
distant future man is to reach the point of projecting his rhythms
out into the world again out of the strength of his own inner
development. Just as there were once beings who, out of their own
rhythms, made the sun, moon and earth move, man will at some future
time transfer his rhythms to the world, when he has reached the stage
of divinity. This is the meaning behind rhythm becoming independent.
We can glimpse from this the deeper foundations of astrology. But we
will not go into that just now. Today we only wanted to show that
spiritual science is not a collection of abstract ideas for those
egoistic people who take an interest in it, but something that can
bring light into the most everyday things of life. One must have the
will, however, to pass from external phenomena to the causes behind
them. Rhythm has been implanted into matter by the spirit, and man,
today, has these rhythms within him as a heritage of this spiritual
origin. Nevertheless we can only understand what this rhythm
signifies for man's being and also for the rest of natural creation
if we go back to the original relationships. In the case of animals
the various bodies — physical body, etheric body, astral body
and group ego — have a quite different relationship to one
another. There is a different rhythm for each animal species. It is
roughly the same for the physical body, but the different animals
have quite different rhythms in their etheric and astral bodies. In
the same way as the animal world is classified nowadays according to
external form, it can be classified in species according to the
rhythms of the astral and etheric bodies.

Do
not imagine that these rhythms have never been clearly recognised. We
will be able to show that it is not so very long since people were at
least dimly conscious of these rhythms. Whoever goes through the
world with a consciousness for these things, will find in some
calendars in use in country districts certain rules referring to
definite relationships between the animals and the land. Farmers used
to manage all their agriculture by observing the rules in such
calendars. In the farmer's lore a consciousness of these rhythms lay
hidden. These are things that can show us that since the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries an age of abstraction, of external science,
has arisen, a science that is no longer in a position to go back to
the causes. This is particularly the case in medicine. People only
grope today, and the solid basis of pathology and of therapy goes
back to ancient times. It was a torture for my intellect and my
feelings when phenacetin was tested. This kind of testing, without
any kind of guide, shows that at the same time as it lost the spirit
science also lost its depth. Through spiritual knowledge this depth
will be acquired again. It is absolutely necessary to distinguish
between caricatures of science and real knowledge based on the
spirit. If you take this to heart you will see how necessary it is to
have spiritual scientific knowledge, and that it has to find its way
into every realm of knowledge and life.